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'Vampire' gigolo killer tells jury how he shot the escort dead

Mark Russell

The gunman who killed self-proclaimed ‘vampire’ gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott has given a graphic account of how he used a .357 Magnum revolver to shoot the escort dead outside his Reservoir home.

The killer told a Supreme Court jury how he shot Mr Chartres-Abbott once in the neck and once in the chest.

The killer said there was no connection between Mr Chartres-Abbott being a vampire and shooting him in the neck.

The killer said he remembered wearing a turtle neck jumper on the day of the murder because it concealed the bottom half of his face. He wore a beanie to mask the top half of his face.

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He claimed he was with Evangelos Goussis when he gunned Mr Chartres-Abbott down.

‘‘I didn't want to attract any attention whilst waiting for the deceased to come out on the morning of his demise,’’ the killer told the jury during the trial of three other men – Mr Goussis, 46, Mark Perry, 46, and Warren Shea, 42. Each has pleaded not guilty to murder.

The Crown case is that the shooting of Mr Chartres-Abbott, 28, was an act of revenge.

Mr Chartres-Abbott had been on trial in the County Court at the time of his death for the rape and mutilation of Mr Perry’s ex-girlfriend at a hotel in Prahran in July 2002. The woman was found naked, bloodied and unconscious in the hotel room with evidence of strangulation, of having been beaten and bruised with bite marks over her body and part of her tongue ripped out.

Chartres-Abbott – a male escort who had both male and female clients – previously told the woman he was a 200-year-old vampire who no longer drank blood because he was living in the real world.

The Crown contends that the three men are guilty of murder because they had been involved in a joint criminal enterprise to kill Chartres-Abbott.

The Crown claimed Mr Perry had contacted his friend, Mr Shea, who in turn contacted the killer to take care of Mr Chartres-Abbott.

The killer told the jury he put the gun down the front of his jeans before he and Mr Goussis casually walked to Mr Chartres-Abbott’s home on June 4, 2003.

‘‘The timing was very, very precise and there wasn't much time to wait around there before the actual incident occurred,’’ he said.

‘‘My memory was that I went into automatic mode when I seen Chartres-Abbott come from the house [with his girlfriend and her father] ... the gun was pulled out at that time.

''I was in a state of action from when seeing him until I pulled the trigger and I had no clear memory.

‘‘I remember coming in between Chartres-Abbott and whoever he was with and firing, firing the gun.

‘‘I fired the gun directly at Chartres-Abbott. I believe at the time he was in a self-defence state one could say, bending forward and I imagined that I aimed at his chest and shot him in the chest.

"I know that one shot hit him in the neck region. I thought I actually shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the neck from memory.

‘‘I remember him going down. I remember looking, looking down. I remember a mark on his neck as he was going down. So I knew then that it was fatal.

‘‘I have a memory of someone screaming. I have a memory of someone standing outside that panel beating shop, a worker. I was more worried about that, which was an unforeseen problem, more than taking anything else in.’’

The killer said he and Goussis then ‘‘took off’.

The crime remained unsolved for several years until the killer told police in 2006 about his involvement and implicated the three accused.

The three men say the killer cannot be believed, is an inveterate liar and they were not involved in any way in the murder.